No one could have foreseen the disruptions and tragedies that are ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic!
However, even as major shifts are happening to just try to counter the progress of the worldwide pandemic, articles are appearing that ponder changes that will result when any sense of normalcy happens. Some see improvements, others see opportunities. Here is an article in the Globe and Mail, March 25, 2020, — ‘The education world has been turned upside down’: Online learning may reshape the classroom
— https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-as-online-learning-rolls-out-education-may-change-forever/#comments
This is the comment I made:
How much of this education disruption has been foretold?
Despite decades of “reforms” it takes a world health epidemic to turn schooling “upside down”.
In ‘71 UNESCO did a report — Wastage in education: a world problem. Issues identified: dropouts, illiteracy, poor training of teachers, the basics, etc.
In ‘71 Ivan Illich published — Deschooling Society, stating: “The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling.” He proposed “learning webs” way before Internet.
John Taylor Gatto wrote — Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 1991. He complained re, “compulsory government monopoly mass schooling”.
With the corona virus entry on the world scene, New York Times, Feb 28, ’20 printed — “Fear of Vast ‘Mass Home-Schooling’ Experiment”, raising the fear that technology and stay-at-home-students would make schools expendable.
With worries that home education would be unfair for those families unable to harness technology, how long will it be before calls go out for “Ed Relief”?
Time to discuss accountability, alternatives, family choice in education & ed funding following the child.